#literally 20 minute of super bumpy gravel/dirt road

[popcorn-plots]

the darkhold or charcoal?

other pics from the lake

[eastithoughtyousaidweest]

Laos is More

7/11

Ok fair warning, I’ve only gotten about 3.5 hours of sleep in the last 24, and most of it was on a plane, so I wanna make this fast. But I had to write about my first day in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, because it’s been killer.

My flight from Hong Kong was 3 hours, then a 6 hour layover from 12am to 6am in the Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia (where I’ll be back at in 5 days lawl), and then another 3 hours to Vientiane. Luckily, the KL airport is pretty nice, with trees and lounge chairs and abundant outlets. So I worked on my Malaysia film the whole time, which was solid.

I arrived in Vientiane and took a taxi to the hotel where Christina (who is a great friend of mine from Northwestern) and her group of 5 other students are staying while they take Lao language classes and Laos history classes at the nearby university. I got immediate good vibes when my cab driver, without prompting, started teaching me how to say “hello” and “thank you” in Laos (see list below). We spent most of the ride doing a vocab lesson, with various interruptions for him to point out cool spots. Vila was his name. A homie indeed.

The hotel itself is nice; a bed, hot water, A/C, a western toilet, so I can’t complain. I met up with Christina for lunch at 12, and got some fried noodles with chicken at a little restaurant down the street that reminded me a lot of Masaya, the city I stayed in in Nicaragua. All the tables and chairs were plastic, and the nylon tablecloths were covered in giant Pepsi logos. Loved it.

The rest of the day, I sat in on her Laos history class and learned about the various conquerors and movements for independence (Siam aka Thai, then French, then free but screwed by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. For more info, read this: https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21714972-how-unremitting-decade-long-bombing-campaign-affected-small-southeast-asian).

After class, which I mostly dozed off through cause jet lag, we walked to this amazing Buddhist temple called That Luang. It’s a huge golden spike with colorful, elaborate buildings all around it, all hosting shrines to the Buddha, paintings of the Buddha’s life, and amazing sculptures of dragons and gods and spirits. We walked around talking about religion and commercialization of holy places and admiring the artistry of it all.

Then we walked around an amazing food market, this enclosed tunnel with food stalls on both sides, long tables covered in skewered meat, huge bowls of sautéed veggies, intestines and rice wrapped in lotus leaves like tamales, and bubble tea in plastic bags. Other plastic bags served another function; they were attached to fans above the food, where they swung around like ghosts, keeping flies away. I got a pork bun, which made me SOOO happy because they’re my favorite food from China and I didn’t get to eat any in the airport yesterday and I thought I’d never see them again.

We actually ended up going back there for dinner, and I got a plastic bag of spicy green vegetables and some skewered spiced hardboiled eggs. We went with these two women from England, Jess and ____, who we actually met on our way out of the hotel. They were looking for English speakers, and lo and behold, we speak English. We took them to the market, chatted about Islamophobia in England and Trump in the US (of course), and then made some plans for me to meet up with them tomorrow while Stina’s in class and go to a cool park. The beauty of traveling and spontaneity.

Anyway, so far I’ve been super impressed by Stina’s Lao skills, and have felt super welcomed by all the smiling Lao people who say “hello” when we walk down the street, even if they don’t speak any other English. Sure, we have the foreigner exoticism going for us, but their genuine smiles tell me it’s also just true friendliness, and I’m psyched to explore that more tomorrow.

<3 Scaht

New Words (these are spelled how they sound in my head, not necessarily how the English spelling is supposed to be)

• Sabaidee-hello

• La kon- Be well

• Pope gon mai-see you later

• Ka lu nah-please

• Buo-no

• Kop chai-thank you

• Kawhy suh-my name is….

• Hong nam yu sai?-Where is the bathroom?

• Phuh-noodles

• Nung-one

• Song-two

• Sam-three

• Ha-five

• Hok-six

• Sip-ten

• Sao-twenty

• Poi-hundred

• Pan-thousand

7/15

The Mekong River, also known as the Nam Khong in Lao and Thai, is the world’s 12th longest river, and it winds its pretty little way through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. And today we spent a glorious day riding its currents.

Christina and I signed up literally 15 minutes before this tour agency our friend on the trip told us about last night. We roped in two other guys who are part of Christina’s program in Laos as well, Russell and Devon.

We started at 8:30 am after my hostel, which I’m paying $6 a night for, made me a beautiful omelet and half a baguette, as well as fresh fruit, for breakfast. God damn. Analong, our guide, was probably about 28 or 29, and had a big smile as he greeted us. We hopped in a van with him and headed to pick up the kayaks and hit the river.

On our way, we drove on a bumpy dirt rode, clanking up and down through potholes, surrounded by steep mountains blanketed in deep green brush. Pineapple farms, rice paddies, cornfields and more lined the road, and wooden stalls every few hundred feet sold huge piles of fresh pineapple; Analong told us it was pineapple season, and judging by the amazingly sweet chunks we ate a lunch, I believe him.

We entered the river off a muddy, unmarked gravel bank, Christina and I in one kayak and Russell and Devon in the other, with Analong and our other guide Jim in a third. The sun was bright and hot, and as Analong explained safety stuff to us, I could already feel my bare toes roasting like chicken nuggets, but once we started paddling, the breeze as we sliced through the water kept me cool.

As we paddled through the greenish-brown river, we passed fishermen in long, thin wooden canoes, farmers taking a break from their riverside fields, and a bunch of other tourists, mostly in motorized canoes drive by Lao men. But the traffic wasn’t too bad, and there was no way it could take away from the peacefulness of flowing down the river, chatting sometimes, other times just looking around taking in the palm trees and thick jungle and river weeds and mountains in the distance.

After about 45 minutes, we stopped at a park called Tad Sae, where a little waterfall ran down over big mossy boulders into multiple pools. Tourists, white Asian and Lao, all were splashing around and swimming, or hiking along the shaded dirt trails around the water. In the corner, there was a big shaded pagoda where about 6 elephants stood around, wooden seats strapped to their backs for tourists to ride them. It made me sad to see, but the good news is that Analong told me a new law was passed last year that will phase out elephant riding and send all elephants to a sanctuary within the next few years. However, when I Googled this, I didn’t find anything, so it’s unclear where this info came from.

Anyway, the best part of the park was about to come my way, because as we turned down a path, a little black monkey, so fuzzy and arms as long as his body, came hopping up to us. His pupils were huge, making his whole eyes look black, and he made little chirp chirp noises as he jumped up at our feet. Then he grabbed onto Christina’s leg and yanked himself onto her outstretched arm, swinging there from his hands like it was a branch. After exploring her a bit, I put my arm out and he swung over to me.

The minute I touched him I knew I was in love. I have a very clear memory of where my monkey visions began. I don’t know if it was an actual dream or a daydream, but at some point when I was maybe six years old, I had a vivid picture in my head appear: I was an adult. I arrived home from work, and opened my front door. Down the long hallway in front of me came bounding a little fuzzy monkey, just like this one, who clambered up my leg and sat down on my shoulder, overjoyed to see me, as I was him.

So you can see why this moment was special, a culmination of over a decade of longing for something that I had damn near given up on. I named him Nam Kong, after the Nam Khong river plus King Kong. I played with him for like half an hour, watching him swing around stair railings, scamper around people’s picnic tables and just generally be adorable. He was so smart, finding a water bottle with a lemon in it and trying to open it up, and taking things right out of my hand with his. It really was amazing how many human-like qualities he had. Even though he was ultimately more interested in people with food than my heart full of love, I understand why, and I believe that our short encounter was only the beginning of my long term monkey fantasies being realized.

I love you Nam Kong. May your days be merry and bright, and may all your bananas be ripe.

<3 Scaht

Some More New Lao Words

• Tao dai?-How much?

• Saeb-good

• Saeb bo?-Is it good?

• Saeb Saeb (high pitched)-Very good

• Buo pen yong-You’re welcome/no problem

7/16

Just some quick things I learned and reflections on Laos while I sit in the Vientiane airport for 6 hours between my flight from Luang Prabang to here and my flight from here to Malaysia:

Fun Laos Facts

According to my tour guide Analong yesterday, Laos is 20 percent more expensive to live in than any other country in Southeast Asia. I don’t know all the details, but from what I learned, it seems like this is because of the high price of many goods and the high price of electricity. Laos needs to import a lot of its goods because it’s a landlocked country and has no ports, which makes them costlier. Also, Laos generates a ton of electricity from hydropower, but this doesn’t stop the energy from being very pricey; some think this is because electricity is being exported to neighboring countries to benefit the company investors, and then resold to Laos at higher prices.

Many Lao people believe the Mekong River is haunted by spirits, which made our tour guide Jim afraid to fish in it

Buddhist monks in Laos are highly respected, and one shouldn’t even get close to them or it’s considered disrespectful. You’re also supposed to sit down when they pass by you. They even get priority boarding on some airlines.

In Laos, feet are considered dirty and the head is considered holy. It’s very insulting to point your feet at someone, and you’re not supposed to touch anybody’s head

China is investing in a ton of huge projects in Laos, including a high-speed railway connecting the two countries and a bunch of fancy hotels

Reflections

People in Laos that I met, from drivers of tuk tuks (motorcycles with carts on back that act as taxis) to street food stall owners, were all very friendly. Tuk tuk drivers were almost always chatting with Christina when they saw she spoke a little Lao, and on the flipside, every shop owner who I ungracefully tried to buy things from was very patient and worked to communicate with me, whether that was through improvised hand signals or calling over their kids or friends who spoke some English.

As a communist country, Laos made me more curious about how their system works, and how much it’s stuck to the ideals of communism that many revolutions, such as the one here, based their ideologies on. Gotta learn some more.

After visiting so many beautiful Buddhist temples, or wat, I feel really ignorant about Buddhism as a religion, and I definitely want to learn more. Gotta break out of those Judeo-Christian boundaries.

I am SOOOO thankful to Christina for hosting me here and bringing me along on her adventures. Even though she’s only 3 weeks in and is still learning so much herself, she took me to all the coolest places she’d seen, and even better, she was so down to just wander together and discover new things. Plus I feel like we got to dive deep into conversations about each other, and I learned so much about her, which is a lot harder to do when school and work and everything prevents you from just spending time with people. I’m so excited to read her blog and see how her first long-term study abroad experience shifts and shapes her.

When we were kayaking yesterday, I told her I thought we had good boating chemistry cause we hadn’t had any issue the whole time coordinating our paddles. I’ma take that a step further and say we have good chemistry period. Christina and I have been through a lot together, but just like my trip with Ben, experiencing this whole new place with her felt really special, and I can’t wait to do it again sometime.

Kop chai lai lai, Christina and Laos. Pop gun mai.

<3 Scaht